No, we’re not all Charlie Hebdo, nor should we be

I respect your right to show solidarity with the victims of
this horrible crime by reposting those drawings, but only if you respect my
right not to do so because I happen to find them bigoted and incendiary.

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Je Suis Charlie vigil in New York. Richard Levine/Demotix. All rights reserved.There is nothing new about people suspending their critical
faculties in the aftermath of terrorist attacks; unconscionable atrocities are by
their very nature easier to denounce than understand.

Such a retreat from reason is inevitably accompanied by
attacks on those who seek it out. After 9/11, merely suggesting that the
attacks might have had something to do with US foreign policy was akin to
treason; today it is Charlie Hebdo that is beyond reproach. Now, as then, these
constraints should disturb.

It is no more than a simple statement of fact that among the
reasons a number of the magazine’s staff were selected for assassination by
maniacs was its predilection for Muslim-baiting – this is not a justification,
not an excuse, not a defence – but a relevant part of the historical record. Yet,
just as in September 2001, you’d be most ill-advised to mention it, lest you
wish to be branded a “victim-blamer”,
a “weasel
excuser of murder”, or much worse.

Much of my working life has been given over the defence of
human rights in the face of unduly repressive responses to acts of terrorism. I
remember the climate after 9/11 as if it were yesterday. Those of us who chose
not to wrap our solidarity in George Bush’s stars and stripes can at least find
some solace and vindication in the gradual acceptance that “war on
terror” is counterproductive, and that terrorism is better countered with
justice, despite the overwhelming “with us or
against us” rhetoric of the time.

Today’s grand narrative is very similar and goes something
like this. This wasn’t carefully
calculated murder – akin to many other premeditated ‘hits’, and qualitatively
different to other recent acts of terrorism – it was an attack on “Western
values”, on “European freedom”, on “decent people everywhere”, etc. Now, just
as then, you’re either with Charlie Hebdo, or you’re with the terrorists.
Solidarity means nothing
less than “being Charlie”. Failing to republish or repost offensive
cartoons is an act of cowardice or self-censorship, not a personal or
professional choice. And if anything about that makes you just a little bit uncomfortable,
you clearly don’t understand one or more of the following: how to defend free speech, what Charlie Hebdo is about, satire, French secularism or the
foundations of European civilisation. Ergo you should hold your tongue or go
live somewhere else.

Defending free speech does indeed mean defending speech you
don’t agree with; no need to misquote Voltaire here. But asserting the sanctity
of the free press while demanding the entire fourth estate publish Charlie cartoons
is rank hypocrisy. I respect your right to show solidarity with the victims of
this horrible crime by reposting those drawings, but only if you respect my
right not to do so because I happen to find them bigoted
and incendiary.

To be honest, I’d respect your sudden interest in free
expression a lot more if, for example, you’d have stood with those of us who
defended Samina
Malik, the hip-hop loving “lyrical terrorist”-come-WHSmith-cashier when she
was jailed up for writing nursery rhymes about Jihad, or if you had offered
such a resolute defence of the Nottingham Two when
they were arrested and detained for downloading "terrorist material” – when
what they were actually doing was researching militant Islam as part of their
university course. And since you hold freedom of speech so dear I expect you to
join me in condemning
the Council of Europe Convention and the EU Framework Decision that outlaws "public
provocation to terrorism". Not the crime of actually inciting terrorist
offences, you understand, but speech which “creates a danger” that such
offences may be committed. European law drafted solely with limits on Muslim
freedom of expression in mind.

It is surely a myth that the freedom of expression of the
majority is under threat when #KillAllMuslims is trending on Twitter and the far
right in Europe marches from strength to strength. The much less convenient
truth is that for
many members of minority communities watching all of this unfold, nothing
says white privilege more than the visceral amplification of Islamophobia in
the name of European values. We’re deluding ourselves if we think that simutaneously telling Muslim communities "your sensitivities are stupid and irrelevant - now do your bit for counter-radicalisation" is going to keep us safe.

Now the part where you tell me that Charlie Hebdo isn’t
racist or bigoted because in addition to going out of its way to insult
Muslims, it is an equal opportunities offender. Full disclosure: I’ve never
read the thing and am quite content that my limited grasp of French culture and
language means I’ll never understand why so many people suddenly think it the
height of subversive literature, no matter how many people tell me that as a Private Eye subscriber I should
understand. I guess satirical greatness is in the eye of the beholder.

Nor will anyone convince me that taking the reification of
Charlie to ever more stupefying heights – c.f. the New Yorker’s likening of its “pioneering
free expression” to that of Gandhi and Martin Luther King – will do
anything other than play into the hands of the racists and fascists whose
fondness for free speech extends only as far as their desire to use it to destroy
human rights. As with 9/11, we are walking into the trap the terrorists have
set for us. Tragedy, farce, repeat.

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